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Writer's pictureRuth Gilmour

Five Tools We Love

Updated: Oct 13, 2022




There are the tools I use in our businesses daily. They help me to stay organised, make systems and processes smoother, assist with communication, client management and more!

Loom: Loom is a screen sharing software, that I discovered a few years ago and have not stopped using! This piece of software records everything you see on your screen and can then be sent as a recording that can be viewed. This is a game changer for saving time and communicating with others.

The following is a list of contexts in which I use loom:⁠

- With clients If I'm dealing with a really complicated wedding timeline I'll record myself with the timeline up chatting over it and send the link⁠

- When my website designer was sharing proofs with me this is how I provided feedback⁠

- When I'm sharing with my editor a new job, such as a new wedding, and want to communicate information with her⁠

- When communicating a project with my assistant⁠

- When Haley and I are recording video content for our courses we use this too! Studio Ninja⁠: Studio ninja is a CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) that allows you to manage your clients, leads, shoots, invoices, contracts, workflows and so much more. I trialed a lot of CRM’s but studio Ninja was the one that I found the most intuitive to use.⁠ Studio Ninja supports us by managing emails, bookings, tracking leads and creating workflows. My subscription to SN really is some of the best money I spend in my business!


If your'e interested in how we create our client workflows (all the things we do from start to finish in a job) we have an online course on it! If you are a Wedding photographer you can find out more about workflows here. If you're a family, Maternity or newborn photographer we give away all our secrets on how we set up our workflows here!


Want to try StudioNinja?

Get 50% Off your first year with us! CODE: IDHTBTH50


Other platforms: Dubsado, 17 Hats, Shoot Q, Honeybook

Canva:

We used to use Photoshop for everything design, but Canva has been such a game changer as a much more user friendly piece of software! We use it for our instagram and story posts, our workshop branding and online course pdf's and even created our logos in it too. There is a team account so there is no need for emailing design files back and forth between colleagues you may work with. For the less savvy designers there are loads of templates you can personalise to help you along your Canva journey.


Trello:

This is a list making app, great for simple projects or to do lists. One of the great features is that this can be shared with team members who can have their own boards or view ours.⁠ I have a Trello for each of my team members.


We have a board for listing our jobs to edit⁠, lists for print orders that need to be made⁠, to do lists for our assistants, identifying urgent jobs⁠.


Haley and I also have our own Trello Board to record our goals and todo list for our courses, podcast and workshops!


Social media scheduling tools⁠: These are tools that enable you to quickly and easily plan plan and publish all your social content from one calendar. For instagram this also means you can visualise what your posts will look like together in a grid before you actually share them.⁠ Whether you want to plan months ahead or just a week ahead, these tools save you time and head space!


Examples: Planoly, Later


We hope that sharing these tools is beneficial for you! We only wish we had found them sooner!

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